Sawbones (12 page)

Oleg shrugged, his big hand reaching for another jar. Ezra tried not to look; he didn’t want to know what it was.

“It’s the tongueless cadaver, isn’t it?” he said. The man was impassive. “The tongueless corpse. It’s all about the bloody corpse. I knew it would bring trouble—”

“Corp
ses
,” the man said, taking a pull on his clay pipe. “There were two.”

Ezra frowned. “No, there was one – one man, a Negro, without a tongue – that’s what you’re talking about, and he’s dead. You smashing this place up won’t change that!”

“Corp
ses
,” the man said again.

Ezra tried to think. What did he mean? “We see many, many corpses. Every week…”

“But there were two at the last lecture. My sources aren’t wrong.”

“Yes, there were two.”

“See? That was not hard. And was there anything else? Any jewellery?”

“Of course not!” Ezra exclaimed. “No clothes, no jewellery, nothing. By the time they come to us we’re lucky if they have their teeth. You must know that!” He looked from one man to the other. “They’re bodies, cold meat. Things. No one bothers with them.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” the man said. “We know there was a boy. And the boy had something we need. Some rubies.”

“How? He had nothing!” Ezra could not think for the life of him why these men would have any interest in some workhouse boy with rickets; they were almost two a penny. “He had drowned.”

“Drowned?” The gunman was suddenly interested. He looked across to Oleg. Oleg raised his eyebrows.

“You’re sure?” The man’s voice was clear and knife-sharp. Definitely foreign. Eastern, he was certain of it.

“Yes,” Ezra replied. He was trembling, but the hand that held the gun, still pointing straight at him, was as steady as a rock. Ezra wondered if it was the same piece that had shot the tongueless man fatally in the back. One shot, that’s all it would take, and he’d be bleeding out on the runner, slap-bang in the middle of the museum. He’d be snuffed out; finished. Ezra swallowed.

“Did you cut the boy open?” Mr Ahmat asked.

“Of course.” Why weren’t they interested in the Negro?

“Show me,” said Ahmat. “Show me the body.”

Ezra shook his head. “We don’t keep the things here.”

Mr Ahmat looked around at the jars lining the room. “It seems to me that you do.”

“The remains are long gone.” Ezra noticed the briefest flicker of regret on the man’s face. He didn’t think he’d be happy with one remaining thigh bone. “The cadavers are removed after the lectures,” he continued. “It’s probably three foot down in the St Pancras boneyard, or St Giles’s – sometimes they use St Giles.”

“Did you open him up?” The man was getting agitated. “Right up?”

“Stem to stern.” Ezra drew a line from his collarbone to his stomach.

“Was there anything … anything odd? Describe him. Paint me a picture.”

“There was nothing I’d not seen before.” Ezra struggled to find words. “He’d have been nine, ten, hard to tell, he’d been in the water—”

“Could you tell how long, just from looking at him?”

“If I had my notebook. It’s over there, in the laboratory.”

Mr Ahmat nodded but kept his gun trained on Ezra as he fetched his book. Ezra made a show of looking for it, his mind racing all the while, wondering what he could do – if there was a way of disarming the gunman, getting hold of the gun, of dodging the man mountain that was Oleg and escaping to call the watch.

Mrs Boscaven and Ellen would be back soon; they might get hurt. He had to do something. Shout out of the window, yell for help?

There was a dissecting knife on the laboratory bench. It might be his only hope. With a quick glance at Mr Ahmat, Ezra palmed the blade and tucked it up his sleeve. Neither Ahmat nor Oleg seemed to have noticed. He could feel the cold metal hard against his skin as he walked back.

“Give it here.” The man waved the gun again. Ezra passed the notebook over.

This was his chance. As Ahmat took the book from him Ezra lunged and stuck the knife into the soft flesh of his forearm. Ezra jumped back, the knife still in his hand.Blood gushed from the man’s arm and the gun fell to the floor. Ahmat’s eyes were flashing fury.

“Oleg!” he yelled.

Ezra felt Oleg jump him before he could even look round; he fell into the cabinet with the skeleton of the Irish Giant, glass, wood and bone splintering everywhere.

Ahmat held his bleeding hand. The curses that flew from his mouth weren’t English.

Ezra tried to get up but was stopped by a sharp pain in his back. He swore under his breath. Above him, Oleg lifted a heavy boot and slammed it down towards his face. Ezra hardly had time to think. He took a piece of glass in his hand, twisted away from the boot just in time and plunged the glass through thick fabric into the flesh of his calf. Oleg screamed.

The gun lay on the floor. Ezra couldn’t reach it; it was too far away. But he could get to the door. Get away.

He tried to stand up but the pain in his back was growing so he crawled, pulling himself inch by inch towards the door.

There was the crack of a gunshot. The ball whistled so close to his face he could feel the heat of it on his cheek. It thudded into the door, wood splintering. The smell of gunpowder and burnt wood joined the reek of blood and preserving fluid.

Ezra looked back. Mr Ahmat had picked up the pistol and he sat up, grey coat stained with red blood. He was swearing at Oleg – Ezra didn’t understand the language but he knew curses when he heard them. He had to get up, had to run.

Ahead of him the door flew open. “Ezra! My God!” The master stood in the doorway holding a broom handle, taking in the scene with a look of horror, the floor awash with fluid and sparkling with a thousand shards of broken glass.

Ahmat and Oleg struggled to stand.

“Get out of my house! This instant!” Mr McAdam yelled, putting out a hand to Ezra and pulling him up.

“Get back, sir,” Ezra shouted, “get back! There is a pistol!”

“The damned man wouldn’t dare—”

At that moment the gun exploded again. Ezra watched the master step in front of him then falter and fall, like a felled tree, onto the soaked carpet. He saw his face register confusion, anger, then pain.

“Master!”

Oleg dragged himself to the open window and jumped. Ezra took the broom handle the master had dropped, but the gunman had stepped over him and was out of the room and down the stairs. Ezra heard another shot, and Toms shouting; then whistles in the street and cries for the watch.

Ezra turned back to Mr McAdam. He was face down, eye to eye with the double-skulled foetus.

“Ezra, lad,” he said, and his eyes began to flutter shut.

“Keep still, sir. It will be all right.”

“I am going, Ez.”

“No, sir. It’s a graze, surely!” Ezra cried and rolled him over. Blood blossomed on his master’s shirt, the deep crimson stain spreading outward against the white linen. Ezra tore it open, the damp fabric shredding easily, and tried not to think of the wound in the chest of the tongueless man.

“I’ll get the ball out, sir,” he sniffed, “and you’ll be as right as rain. No doubt, sir.”

“It’s too late…”

“I’ll not hear of it. No, sir!” Ezra insisted, but he could feel the tears prickling behind his eyes. He was being a fool; there was no cause for distress. Of course he would save him. The master had taught him everything he knew – what good had all that instruction been if he could not save him now?

Ezra took off his own jacket to use that to stop the bleeding, but even in the surgeries at Bart’s he had never seen so much blood; he could not keep his hands from fumbling.

“I can stop it, sir, don’t you worry. Compression will staunch the blood flow…”

The master put out his hand and took one of Ezra’s. His grip was firm. That was a good sign.

“There, you will be all right,” Ezra said, and sniffed again. “I am sorry about everything,” he added. “Everything. I was never grateful enough.” It was difficult to see, his eyes seemed to be somehow blurry.

“Ez, lad, shush.” The master’s voice was low. “Don’t you fret.”

Suddenly Mr McAdam’s grip failed and his arm fell limp in Ezra’s grasp. There was a noise from his throat, a kind of gurgling, coughing sound. Ezra had heard it before – it was the sound of the soul leaving the body. The death rattle.

The master had gone.

The Burial Ground of St George the Martyr
Bloomsbury
London
November 1792

O
n the morning of the funeral Ezra swept the anatomy room as usual, although he had no idea if the place would ever be in use again. But he had to keep busy, do something, anything so as not to think. He almost smiled. Wasn’t that what Miss Finch had said?

When he opened the door into the yard he saw a girl wearing a travelling cloak, her pale face solemn.

“Anna! I thought you had gone!”

“Tomorrow,” she said. Her eyes were red. “They do not know I am here, but when I heard about Mr McAdam… I was so sorry to hear of it. I could not leave without seeing you. I could not!”

“Don’t cry, please.” Ezra blinked. He could not bear this. “Will you write?”

“I will try. You know David.”

Ezra threw the broom down onto the floor. “This is not right! This is not how it should be, the master dead and you going away!”

“Ezra, we cannot change this.”

Ezra shrugged. “Who knows, I may be a free agent. I could travel anywhere, do whatever I want, now the master…”

Anna smiled. “Mr McAdam will look after you even in death. I do not doubt it.”

“I could follow you, Anna, when things are settled.”

“I must go. David is expecting me back,” she said. She took something from inside her cloak. “This is yours, the book you lent me.” It was the Tom Paine. “You never did quite rationalize me.” She suddenly stepped towards him and threw her arms around his neck. Ezra had never felt her so close, warm and alive, and he hugged her back, tighter. He wanted to shout at her to tell her not to go, to stay with him and … and what? He didn’t know his own future, how could he promise her anything at all? He pulled away, his eyes stinging, smarting.

“Goodbye, Ezra,” she said, and slipped away into the street.

Ezra looked up at the heavy grey sky and the rain broke, cold, fat drops that ran down his face. He wiped them away. He had to be strong.

The rain had turned the graveyard into a sea of mud. Ezra looked down into the earth at the coffin and wished a thousand times over that the master was still alive. Their last conversation had been a disaster, Ezra thought. He’d been a spoilt, sulking, stupid child. Ezra felt a prickling behind his eyes and breathed deeply. He was a scientist. Scientists didn’t make wishes. Scientists were rational. He sniffed. Since he could no longer speak to the master, he must live to make him proud. Become the best surgeon he could be.

Before the service the crowd had buzzed with so much talk – the loss to the profession, the shock of Mr William McAdam’s death, that one of the greats should be felled and killed in his own home by a cracksman… Ezra said nothing. It was no cracksman or common burglar that had killed the master. He sighed, and felt his whole body shudder with grief and with the unfairness of it all.

He forced himself to think of something else; he told himself it was an unfortunate soul who was in need of a surgeon this morning, as the entire Company were here. Dark-coated and hatted, feet yellow with London clay like so many blackbirds, they ranged around the grave of Mr William McAdam, Master Surgeon. There was Mr Gordon from the Middlesex, Mr Ramsay and Mr Hardy from St Thomas’s, Mr Franklin from Guy’s, as well as Mr Lashley and a good few others Ezra didn’t recognize. In the throng of students were a couple of young men who stood out in their manner and dress. These two were dressed in the French style with shortish hair, no wigs, and sombre jackets.

Another stranger stood at the priest’s right hand: the master’s nephew, Dr James McAdam. Ezra had only met him once, a few years back, and would have been perfectly happy if their paths had never crossed again. He was a physician in Edinburgh whose one answer to all ailments was leeches and yet more leeches. In Ezra’s view an excessive reliance on those shiny bloodsuckers had informed the man’s character and bearing a good deal.

Dr James had been staying in Great Windmill Street the past two days. In fact, he had settled himself comfortably into the master’s rooms on the second floor. His face, unremarkable and white as dirty snow, registered nothing of any interest at all, Ezra thought. He had taken over the running of the household and of the funeral, which Ezra knew for a fact was not what the master had wanted. If Ezra had believed in such things, he would have said the master was spinning in his grave this instant.

As the coffin was lowered, the Company stood in line to walk past and show their respect. Ezra picked up a handful of mud to throw onto the grave, along with a handful of hellebores. The pain in his back flared up as he swung his arm, and he winced and cursed under his breath.

Mrs Boscaven must have heard. She took Ezra’s arm and spoke softly. “Now then, Ezra, lad. Don’t let the circumstances get the better of you.”

“He didn’t want this,” Ezra said, trying and failing to keep his voice in check. “He told me many times, Mrs B. He wanted to give his body to the science. To be anatomized. To show others there was no harm in it.” Ezra knew his voice was getting louder.

Dr James McAdam caught his eye and shook his head at him as if Ezra were nothing more than a naughty child. The anger raged in him and he backed away through the crowd of mourners, out of the graveyard towards town. He would not cry.

He would not cry.

He ran back through the damp grey streets all the way to Great Windmill Street. No one noticed or passed comment. There were close to a million souls in the city, all with their own grievances, their own upsets. So many died every day, he told himself – babies, children – he knew that. He saw his own face reflected in the glass of a shop window on Long Acre. It stopped him short.

There was the scar that defined him, there were his own features, his eyes redder than usual, but there was something else: there was that same madness he’d seen in Miss Loveday Finch’s face when he saw her that first time outside Bart’s. He rubbed at his eyes, hoping to even out his colour, and hurried home.